That future which only yesterday was the future now today is the present. Just like we mark eras using BC and AD, now we will have BF811 and AF811. Where were you on Sept. 22, 2011, when the world changed? I, unfortunately, was holed up in my grubby little office in a small town in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, I will never forget this day. Never. Ever. How could I? This is the day when Timelines was introduced. Timelines! It is, in a word, profound. Deeply, profoundly profound, in fact. “Facebook Just Schooled the Internet. Again” is how MG Siegler put it on TechCrunch. Which is a pretty amazing feat, coming as it does just a year and a half after “Facebook Just Seized Control of the Internet” as MG Siegler wrote in April 2010. It is pretty amazing, after all, to seize control of the Internet. That was bad-ass enough. But to then school the Internet that you’ve seized control of? Who but Facebook could do that? Good Lord I have to sit down and just think for a minute because my mind is reeling …And all of the rest of the world seems shabby and dull and boring and ancient – just as Mashable predicted. Google, poor old Google, looks like ass. My brand-new MacBook Air, which only last week gave me joy unlike anything I’d ever felt in my life, now sits on my desk, just a dead, lifeless hunk of brushed aluminum. Everything, in fact, has lost its color. I go outside and stand in the yard and gaze up at the sky and I say, Why? Why, sky? Why do you look like shit? You look just the same as ever, just blue sky and white clouds. Why can’t you change the way Facebook changes? And my house, and my dog, and wife and kids — blah. Nothing. Nothing! They are all just the same, just old and tired and ancient and boring and completely lacking in profound beauty. So back to Facebook I go and just immerse myself in the magic. Ahhhh. So much better.